


In Absence, of all

by chimesDissent



Series: No eleventh hour reprieve [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Parental Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 02:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimesDissent/pseuds/chimesDissent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the state of being overwhelmed, and your nerve endings have called it quits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Absence, of all

You are standing in the dark space of your room, and you feel overwhelmed.

The anger that had once burned through your skin, etching coarse dark tracks along its wake, proving your fragility, has abandoned you.

It's been weeks and months and years, but it feels only like hours and you're left trying to process every ache and needle-sharp poke pressed against your bones.

Your rage had been your comfort.

Because it's easier, it's so much easier, to feel hatred bloom from your pores. 

It's a more directed sort of madness and you clung to it, throwing your body into fits of fury and bloodlust.

But the monsters you sought to destroy evaded you. One killed you first, and the others burrowed deeper into your organs, scratching their way past sinew and bone, latching to your core and feeding from your body like the parasites they are.

They can be quiet, and sometimes you forget how deeply their claws are pressed into you.

But today you remember.

Because you've woken up, sleep still pressed against your face, and you just feel

far

too

much.

It would be simpler to fall into a rage now, pulling your nails across the metal sheets that construct your room, screaming your victory hymn as your nails break and bleed and soon it's muscles and bone scrapping on walls.

But all you have now are shadows of the energy such a feat would require.

Your nerves are pinched and pulled and you refrain from moving your body because you are uncertain of how much more pain that would bring.

And the only thing you can do is think. About how much you hate her. Because she was never there like she should have been. Because everything was a mockery and a ploy to her. Because she could have been such a better mother, and she failed. 

She failed you.

And then you hate yourself. Because everything you've just tried to convince yourself of was a lie. Because you never stopped to see where she was hidden. Because you never bothered to discover her sincerity. Because you never wanted to admit that she _loved_ you. 

And that you loved her.

But it's late, it's much too late to change any of this because her blood has already been spread across your hands, and your fingers have already touched the cold still of her body.

This pain feels like a fine-tooth comb being racked across the length of your being.

The ache started at the top of your skull, seeping slowly into the base of your brain, before settling deeply into the marrow of your bones. It feels like it's belonged to you forever, like you've never lived a moment without feeling its traces rush across your skin.

But you know that once, long before, you were free of its grip and you could laugh in the face of horrorterrors and living monsters because you hadn't understood how unbearable real pain could be.

You've lost track of the time you've spent standing in the middle of your room, clutching your sides in the hopes of piecing yourself back together, skin cell by glorious skin cell. 

Time has always been more of Dave's thing, though right now you fail to see how light could have any relationship to you.

But you figure the seconds have ticked by slowly enough. So, gently, you mold yourself back into the caricature you've built for yourself when you've fallen too far, resemblances uncanny on those good days.

And you absorb every ache that thought to go against you. You take them, seizing them between your fingers, squeezing tight, crushing them because delicacies should be damned, and you swallow them. 

Digest them. 

Turn them into nutrients.

Because you won't let this pain overtake you; because you know that eventually, years too far in the future for you to even consider, you will grow from these aches. 

Because monsters can be defeated, whether they're charging at you with swords or nestled between the fine spaces of your heart.

But for now you process these aches, feeling them slide along the length of your throat to the core of your body, and you make them yours.

You are standing in the dark space of your room, and you have discovered what it means to feel numb.

**Author's Note:**

> I hadn’t expected to write Rose’s so soon, but it’s been one week since my friend’s mother died from breast cancer.
> 
> I know you’ll never read this, N, but this is for you. I wish I could have been there for you physically, instead of only being able to use my words to comfort you.


End file.
